Banebow, 40 cards and ally-based

[Sisyphos]

1.5

1x Banebow

4x Brutalis
4x Gargoyle
4x Death Mage
2x Medusil
4x Molten Destroyer
4x Shadow Knight

4x Poison Arrow
1x Flaming Arrow
2x Shriek of Vengeance
2x Ley Line Nexus

4x Wrath of the Forest
4x Soul Seeker

Molten Destroyer has replaced Plasma Behemoth which always used to bug me when I had to pay resources to stay in control (and hence couldn't get out more (5)-drops at the same time or had to make an inconvenient sac to get to 6 resources and play (3)-drop + Plasma's ability). At first I was running Minotaur to deal with mages, but Majiya and Eladwen have ways of dealing with that 6 hitpoints and there actually weren't a lot of Gravebones laddering. Molten also offers better board control when things aren't going so well, the thorns and flames damage adds up nicely with Death Mage, arrows, Soul Seekers and Banebow's ability (that's pretty much Banebow in a nutshell: adding up small bits and bites to wrestle down threats.)

One Flaming Arrow is there just because there's space and going second to Priests of the Light it sucks not to have a Gargoyle ready, so this works as a substitute.

One thing i noticed is that you have to be even more conservative with Banebow's ability than in earlier versions. It is the only thing you can rely on when dealing with Gargoyles, Kurt and Sandworms. A complete 4x Kurt and Worm deck would prolly give this one quite a run for its money, but i haven't encountered it yet. Add more Flaming Arrows, Medusils, Carniboars (vs Kurt) or Minotaur if you run into trouble with these resilient allies.

When you don't get to draw your Wrath of the Forest in time you often run out of threats if you don't include Shadow Knights, esp. against control-oriented players (be they mages or any other class). I wouldn't recommend it.
Be prepared though for what might follow after Shadow Knight dies (i.e. have an arrow or Soul Seeker or at least Death Mage ready). Fireball + Gargoyle means you have to put up with the Gargoyle a little while, hence why I prefer Molten against shadow mages - though it's still quite doable to come back against Gargoyle(s) + constant burn as they can't stick around nearly as long now that Banebow can cut throw their armor.

Alternatives

Just a short list of variants I've actually played.

-1 Molten Destroyer
-1 Flaming Arrow
+2 Sacrificial Lamb
~ If you find yourself having trouble with draw or encounter too many warriors and Moonstalkers for your taste.

-4 Molten Destroyer
+4 Plasma Behemoth
~ It still works, what can i say. Plasmas are esp. preferable to Destroyers against warriors.

-2 Medusil
+2 Bad Wolf
~ Bad Wolf works better when faced with Anklebreaker (also Evil Ascendant, but that's a rather rare sight). Medusil is generally better for staying in control when stuff like Aeon hits.


1.26


Yesterday I've played a couple of quick matches after quite a while of absence and to my surprise encountered more than 1 fellow Banebow players (2 actually), but the experience of watching them attack my hero with extra sharpened Fire Snakes, draw cards with HBMs and surprise attacks, enchant Beetle Demon Bows with Aimed Shots and hide in the woods for no apparent reason was so jarring and painful that I decided it was time to write down a guide to hopefully make the SE server a bit of a better place where not only scrubs choose to represent shadow hunters.

First, here's the deck:

1x Banebow

4x Brute
4x Gargoyle
4x Medusil
3x Bella
4x Plasma Behemoth

2x Poison Arrow
2x Flaming Arrow
2x Bloodlust
3x Shriek

3x Death Trap
4x Wrath of the Forest
4x Soul Seeker


It can of course be varied, but your ally count should always be ~ 18-22 and your 3 drop count ~10-12 (counting 3 cost cards that can be played unconditionally by your 3rd turn, i.e. allies and death traps).

If you don't want to read so much, in short your game will be at its best when going first against humans with Brute – Gargoyle – Bella – Behemoth/Wrath of the Forest/Soul Seeker and at its worst when going second to Brute – Gargoyle – Fireball/Lighting Strike – Behemoth.

A 30 card version of this deck would feature 1 Wrath / Bella / Death Trap / Medusil, 2 Bloodlusts and 4 arrows less.


The Cards:


Banebow's ability unlike many others is never useless no matter the hero you're playing, which is also the reason why having cards that trigger effects at the cost of shadow energy is a waste in a Banebow deck. Esp. early in the game you want to keep your shadow energy if you can't target 2 allies with it. You can start focusing on the enemy hero once the board is yours.

Brute and Gargoyle ideally clear the board of Puwen and a 4 hp ally (after you use your ability) and are generally great because they are so hard to get rid of.

Medusil helps taking care of beefier allies (5+ hitpoints and gargoyles). Without her, you will struggle too hard against shadow's gargoyles and behemoths, though you will likely struggle anyway against shadow mages because they have strong removal spells as well. If things go bad, your allies won't stay in play and unfortunately no hunter ability can take out resilient allies quickly. This is the deck's biggest weakness. However, against humans it is less problematic: With the tools at your disposal you can take out their early allies efficiently, so at best – for them - the board is empty when Raven or Aeon enters play (assuming you draw the right cards). A Raven or Aeon also needs further support to hold you down, unlike a Behemoth.
Or in short you can sac Medusil against humans if you have other allies to play.

Bella is a very good option when there are no enemy allies around to immediately kill her. Works excellently with Banebow's ability that often allows you to clear the stage for her entrance during your 4th turn. Against shadow you can sac her most of the time.

Plasmas are your biggest threat to the other player. Ultimately, you are always aiming to have one of them reign over the board.

Arrows are there to remove very pesky allies (Jasmine when going second, gargoyles and all allies that cost 5 or 6).

Playing a death trap is better than playing a 4 hitpoint ally that could be killed too easily, which is often the case when going second (fireballs, brute+lightning strikes, blake/jasmine + aldon). With your ability and a Soul Seeker you can always take care of small groups of enemy allies, but as a hunter you have no board reset card and a whole crowd becomes quickly more than you can get under control. Death Trap helps prevent that, but is a bit of a gamble – when you set it up your opponents usually don't want to waste their big guys on it, but don't have a low cost ally to throw into the trap either (because these have either been played or sac'ed already), so how long your trap stalls the game depends on when they draw their next expendable.

Bloodlust comes in handy every now and then, f.e. while your ability is still charging or when your allies get crippled by warriors, but overall the card doesn't shine often enough to warrant more than 2 copies of it. For dealing lots of damage you have behemoths.

Shrieks don't need much commenting. They allow you to remove a key item and still have enough resources to play something else the same turn, but since they come at the permanent cost of a resource you should always consider other options before playing them.

Wrath of the Forest is your basic drawing engine and it's pretty sweet. I value it higher than Ill-gotten gains because its effect, while being conditional as well, depends on how *your deck is built and played, not that of the other hero. Plus it has a defensive value that shouldn't be sneezed at.

Soul Seeker is an amazing comeback card and should only be sac'ed when you are sure that the board is and will stay yours.


Card Alternatives:


Keldor & Bad Santa instead of Bella & Death Trap

Keldor, like Bella, is a strong card when going first and has a better synergy with Wrath of the Forest than Death Trap. Your turn 4 play would be Keldor's ability + Bad Santa instead of Bella or Wrath, but due to Banebow's ability you don't necessarily need him to immediately remove a 4hp ally. Ability + Keldor is good for removing gargoyles though. Against mages you want to play a gargoyle even when going first, because you don't want to get your allies fireballed before you have Wrath of the Forest in play.

Cobraskin Wraps instead of Bella or Wrath

Another card that is made for going first. The defensive value can be ignored mostly, as you want to play this card to delay the game by a turn when you have won the board and don't want to let your opponent reach a game changers too fast (Nova, Tidal Wave, weapons).

Shadowspawn

Banebow's ability cost of 3 is 1 lower than many other, which is why these 2 cards work together so well. There are a lot of heroes with board control abilities that you can hurt really bad with Shadowspawn and it also works wonders against Elementalis, Gravebone and Ter Adun. However, Jericho and Majiya aren't threatened by it. In the current meta running a few copies of this card is hardly a good idea, but then again, lower rated players don't play the meta, so if you do a lot of quick matches you might want to try it out.

Nightprowler

Bit of a random set-up when you only have 4 bows, but it's very rewarding whenever it works. If you like stealing your opponents cards, Nightprowler does quite ok since the deck offers so many ways of removing enemy allies.




Cards I haven't mentioned at all are, for reasons I won't bother going into unless someone asks specifically about them, not worth a slot in an ally-based Banebow deck (imo).

[Melph]

I am playing with a Banebow deck with currently 30 cards. Here's some impressions I have:

You need 4 Shriek. Sometime you don't need that much but other time I would need more then that. There is nothing like blowing a Snow Sapphire or AoA to help you finish your opponent.

Brute are useless. Please don't waist your ability on Puwen keep it for the next turn when they play Jasmine or Aldon or even Raven. Puwen deal not enought damage to be a threat. Anything that you play on turn 3 will kill them. There is nothing worst late game when you top deck a Brute while you would have needed more muscle.

Bloodlust is not something I would use. When it's good, most of the time it's overkill. Agains heavy ally control deck like Majiya or Priest then it's a dead draw.

[BlanketEffect]

I have recently rebuilt my Banebow to be 40 cards and take advantage of the 1.26 updates.

Wrath of the Forest is so good now that it's only 4 to play. Very good.

Not a big fan of Bloodlust. It's a decent card, but I'd rather have more versatility than overkill.

Normally, I'm becoming less and less a fan of Brutalis, opting more often than not to leave them out. However, in certain decks that lack early speed, Brute kills spark, snake (eventually), and Blake. He's not totally useless.

I originally used 4 death traps, but found that (with Banebow, running heavy allies) I was always being forced to choose between playing preemptive creature control (death trap) or establishing board presence (allies). With Banebow, who between his special ability, arrows, and allies, doesn't have a lot of issue with killing anything on the board quickly, there's not much tactical advantage to running Death Trap instead of working in 4 more allies.

Just my take.

[soothslyr]

it's nice to see you finally sharing this deck with the masses. i have played you many times, and can testify that it holds its own against most, if not all deck types. i took a page out of this book and built a similar baduruu deck that i've been having success with. i wouldn't really change anything, it is pretty much a well oiled machine in the hands of an experienced player as is. as for comments, i agree with @Blankeffect that wrath of the forest is not only useful now, but can be deadly in the right set up. i have personally found that Keldor is a great addition to this archetype, but that is just a simple design choice. congrats @Sisyphos for a fine build that i expect to now see being used by lesser players (no offense all), and mimicked to no end.

[jiminee]

I've had a Banebow deck that I almost went with for the Official Tournament. It's a little bit different than what Sisyphos has.

Banebow

4x Brutalis
4x Infernal Gargoyle
3x Medusil
3x Chimera
3x Plasma Behemoth

3x Poison Arrow
3x Flaming Arrow
2x Surprise Attack

4x Bloodlust
4x Shriek of Vengeance
4x Bad Santa

2x Soul Seeker


A couple of thoughts:

Card draw - In a 40 card environment, card draw becomes much more important which is why I have 6 cards that will help me with that. I personally don't prefer Wrath of the Forest for a couple of reasons. One, it slows down your tempo. And two, I've found that I usually just grab 2 (at most 3) cards off of it before it gets destroyed.

I've opted for 4 Bad Santas and 2 Surprise Attacks, which might be surprising to some of you. I really like how I can benefit from these cards at once, giving me the capability to play a card that I just drew on the same turn. The key is knowing when to play what and it usually pays off mid-to-late game when you have 6 or more resources.


No traps - I've found that pro-active defense is much better than re-active ones (i.e. arrows are better than traps). Coupled with Banebow's ability, arrows are a great way of helping clear the board better. A DT is predictable, can be destroyed, and cost 1 more resource to cast. An arrow, on the other hand, can be stacked, targets the specific ally you want and deadly with Banebow's ability.


Bloodlust - Since the topic was touched on earlier, I might as well mention the reason why I have 4. Having a creature heavy-deck, this is a no-brainer for me to include. It is just one more thing to help you grab (or maintain) board control. You really only need 2 creatures for this card to be effective that's almost always possible with this deck.


Only 2 bows - Without +damage that Gwen (and even Victor) has, Banebow isn't that great with bows, ironically as that sounds. I used to have 4, but I've found that I barely use it. I subbed 2 for Surprise Attack.


It's not as great as your typical Gwen hunter deck, but this has done surprisingly well.

[Atomzed]

Great sharing by everyone. The explanation makes it easy for everyone to understand. Thumbs up!

I realized that after a deck is posted on SE forum, new players will start to copy it. That can be a good thing, cos we can encouraged other players to try the less popular heroes.

[Drone38]

I've been testing out a VERY similar banebow deck myself. There are a couple differences that I think also work well.

I use deathbone instead of traps because of all of the mages running around. The extra death damage can be really useful against gargs too. I like your reasoning and can see why death trap can be so useful as a good ally staller, though. I actually tested using net trap to try and stall for more SE and board presence and found it effective, but I just couldn't get over how much more effective arrows would likely be.

I'd consider running at least 1 bad santa and maybe one less SS. There are hands when you just need cards and having 3 SS should be enough to draw one when needed and enough to play more if destroyed.

I personally love bloodlust, so I run 3. It's especially good in the current "quick game" matches against mages and zaladar, against whom you really want to beat the punch. Also, banebow takes board control well but has few "win-more" abilities to maintain it besides trap. Bloodlust kinda fills this niche especially when waiting for the SE to charge again to get the extra kill dmg on allies.

[ertai88]

it's nice to see you finally sharing this deck with the masses. i have played you many times, and can testify that it holds its own against most, if not all deck types. i took a page out of this book and built a similar baduruu deck that i've been having success with. i wouldn't really change anything, it is pretty much a well oiled machine in the hands of an experienced player as is. as for comments, i agree with @Blankeffect that wrath of the forest is not only useful now, but can be deadly in the right set up. i have personally found that Keldor is a great addition to this archetype, but that is just a simple design choice. congrats @Sisyphos for a fine build that i expect to now see being used by lesser players (no offense all), and mimicked to no end.

I played Sisyphos and got thrashed.. I know how awesome this deck is and like soothslyr said, put it in the hands of an experienced player who knows how to use the cards and i think this deck can be a real force in the competition

[Nands]

Here is my Banebow ally control deck:

Banebow

4x Infernal Gargoyle
4x Brutalis
4x Chimera
3x Medusil

3x Poison Arrow
2x Flaming Arrow
3x Net Trap
4x Shriek of Vengeance

4x Night Prowler
4x Soul Seeker
4x Beetle Demon Bow

[eleena]

Here is my Banebow ally control deck:

Banebow

4x Infernal Gargoyle
4x Brutalis
4x Chimera
3x Medusil

3x Poison Arrow
2x Flaming Arrow
3x Net Trap
4x Shriek of Vengeance

4x Night Prowler
4x Soul Seeker
4x Beetle Demon Bow

When are you using Net Trap? I would think early game you would want to wait and use an arrow instead (same cost) and late game a Death Trap is obviously much better.

Also, are you keeping Night Prowler out? Do you only drop it when the opponent has no allies? I've never used it, but it would seem hard to keep up, especially without Into the Forest.

Also, Banebow is the one hunter I would suggest never use Beetle Demon Bow. Your shadow energy should always be going towards the ability and the 1 damage isn't enough to warrant using it as just a weapon.